this final day of the SBL I attended the Josephus Seminar and heard a
genuinely remarkable paper by Etienne Nodet of the Ecole Biblique in
Jerusalem regarding the Slavonic version of Josephus. Nodet argues that the
Slavonic version is closer to the original Josephus than most greek texts.
His paper discussed various portions of that version as examples of
Josephus' biblical exegesis including some passages on Abraham, Herod the
Great, 4 Maccabees, Daniel, etc. Of particular interest to me is his
mention of a passage where Abraham is sent to the land of Canaan as
punishment! (War 1.641). He then turned to a discussion of the Jewish style
of the slavonic version. In the final section of the paper he offered a
possible explanation for what he found. Since the Slavonic version is
shorter than the Greek is it possible that there were 2 editions of the War?
The second paper discussed christian interpretation of the infanticide and
cannibalism of mary. Of much interest to the members of these lists may be
the final paper which was a fine discussion of the Testimonium Flavianum.